As expected, last night lawless demagogue and crime boss Donald "Individual 1" Trump commuted the 40 month sentence of his campaign bag man / co-conspirator / ratf*cker Roger Stone. Stone had been convicted by a jury of seven felonies, ranging from witness tampering to lying to Congress regarding his role as the Trump campaign's contact point for hacked e-mails provided by Russia's military intelligence services to their partner WikiLeaks during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
While the move by Trump was entirely expected for months, he waited until 4 days before convicted felon Stone was set to appear in prison to begin his sentence. The commutation of his dirty trickster sends yet another message that Trump will reward those that commit crimes on his behalf, as long as they remain silent:
"For a president who sparked a special counsel probe by firing an FBI director in the middle of an investigation and was later impeached for attempting to pressure a foreign government to investigate his political rival, the move to grant Stone clemency underscored his continued willingness to disrupt the nation’s legal and political norms just months before an election."Trump appreciated that Stone kept his mouth shut, and Trump out of further legal peril. The obvious quid-pro-quo was indicated by Stone himself in a conversation last night with Beltway media fixture Howard Fineman:
Done. https://t.co/BKj3WUzius— howardfineman (@howardfineman) July 10, 2020S
So Stone didn't "turn on" Trump who was in on the whole dirty business, and as any good soldier in organized crime, you're rewarded by the boss for not snitching to the Feds. That's justice under the Trump regime.
BONUS: Calling it "one of the most nauseating instances of corrupt government favoritism the United States has ever seen," the Washington Post concludes this morning's editorial saying, "If the country needed any more evidence, Friday confirmed that the greatest threat to the Republic is the president himself."
(photo: Stone in his casual Friday get-up)
